Curtis redux

LISTEN. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I choose to draw down the curtain on our short summer course with one last nod to my old landlord Winterton Curtis. I've already posted a small excerpt of his Dayton recollections below, but Tompkins' D-Days at Dayton (LSU Press,1965) includes a lengthier essay and his formal affidavit as submitted to the court.

Curtis writes:

In 1901 [as Curtis began his teaching career at my dad's and my alma mater, the University of Missouri], it seemed to me and to the vast majority of zoologists that the public controversy over evolution had ended a decade before the turn of the century. I remembered how, as a college student in the mid-nineties [that's the 1890s], I had almost wished that I had been born twenty years earlier and had participated... when the fighting was really hot. If anyone had told me that within twenty-five years the fight would be on once more and the climax would be legislation against the teaching of a scientific fact so well established as the doctrine of evolution, this would have seemed incredible.

...Because [former] students had come to me with their problems [teaching evolution in high schools and some of the denominational colleges] and because the "Fundamentalist Crusade," under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan, was assuming alarming proportions, I began about 1920 to take an active part in the defense of evolution.

...The Macedonian call from Dayton, Tennessee, that came to me one hot July morning in 1925 was probably due to my activities in defense of evolution as well as to my geographical location, to my recent book Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology, and to whatever standing I then had as a zoologist...

In his book Curtis wrote, among many other passages I find personally compelling:

The humanistic philosophy of life, which flowered in Greece and which has blossomed again, is not the crude materialistic desire to eat, drink, and be merry. It is a spiritual joy in living and a confidence in the future, which makes this life a thing worthwhile. The otherworldliness of the Middle Ages does not satisfy the spiritual demands of modern times.

And,

...the gods do not help us to that which we desire; we help ourselves, by understanding nature and by ordering our lives in conformity to her laws. Courage and high resolve are needed thus to face the realities of life. The night of fear is still about us, though we face the new day. At times, we lose all hope that a scientific philosophy of life can ever prevail within the hearts of men. In the faith that it will prevail, we lay hold upon scientific truth as we see it around us, believing that in the end no other state of mind will satisfy as well. 

In D-Days Curtis details a remarkable trial postscript, his later discovery (on visiting Dayton in 1956) that there had been credible threats on Darrow's life after his cross-examination of Bryan which led Judge Raulston to strike those proceedings from the court record and discontinue further cross-examination.

He writes:

On the hopeful side, I found among students a much greater interest in my course on evolution during the decade following 1925 while the "Monkey Trial" was still remembered.

But he goes on to deplore the subsequent retrenchment of anti-evolutionism since the 1950s, with many college students now arriving on campus already inured against any consideration of the evidence so strongly in its favor. "Would that the fundamentalists would learn that facts are stubborn things which will not be denied and that in the long run religious doctrines must square with the facts of science if these doctrines are to survive in the minds of educated and thoughtful men." And women. Religion must evolve, as must attitudes and language

Curtis and Darrow formed a lasting friendship in Dayton, which Curtis credited with helping him persevere in the face of dire illness.

...in the spring of 1924 I had been told that I had perhaps two years to live. A growth diagnosed as Hodgkins disease had been removed from my neck... But I found my agnostic philosophy of life sufficient unto the day... My escape was in work that took my mind off my problem, my philosophy that we all take our chances with the order of nature and that this problem was mine to handle as best I could without hope of Heaven or fear of Hell...

After dinner at "The Mansion" Curtis's first night in Dayton, he and Darrow spent a long time talking out on the veranda.

...When we parted [Darrow] remarked, "There aren't many who think about these things as you and I do..." 

The important thing I got from this first contact with Darrow was an uplift of spirit. It seemed to me I could still keep going... I remember writing him some weeks after the trial, "Because of meeting you, I have renewed courage to face life..."

Strength for living comes from different sources, for different folks. Acknowledging that is what pluralism in philosophy is ultimately about.
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Here's the first page of Dr. C's lengthy annual holiday letter ("report to stockholders") from 1963, addressed to my parents. Note the reference to D-Days at Dayton in the second paragraph.


Dr. C., I think you can tell from just this snippet of personal correspondence (and as further evidenced in his charming autobiographical notes A Damned-Yankee Professor in Little Dixie), was no crass materialist. There was a pronounced spiritual dimension to the man, as he himself averred in the penultimate chapter of his book "The Higher Values of Science":

The material values of science are widely acclaimed. Its higher values are commonly ignored. For the man of the street, science represents only control of his physical environment. As a matter of fact, the changes induced by science within this environment are insignificant, when compared with those wrought within the human mind. To designate these higher values of science, the term spiritual may be used...

The account of creation in the book of Genesis, when compared with the tale outlined by modern science, is like some nursery story, cherished as part of a departed childhood and wonderful in its proper setting, but not to be classed with the great symphony made known by science...

Cue the Symphony of Science again!

Winterton Curtis really does anticipate Carl Sagan, for me. Carl could well also have said, and in his own idiom did, "One of the tragedies of life is the fact that so many minds close at the threshold of what might have become a great adventure... science counts of the side of the open mind."

But it was not the author of The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark who first remarked on

a subtle change of ideas and of beliefs, comparable to the changes of intellectual outlook in the past, by which superstitions, like infant damnation, witchcraft, demoniacal possession, and the belief in ghosts were rendered impotent... The history of scientific progress has been marked by spiritual emancipations. Today the process still goes on, for supernaturalism is not yet fully vanquished, but lingers on as a miasma of society.

In this manner, science feeds the spiritual as well as the material man... 

The Cosmos we know today is unbelievably complex...

The biological discovery of man's place in nature did more than change traditional beliefs; it gave a point of departure into a future, unknown but fraught with possibilities... 

The future is bright with a promise that stands at the threshold of realization. Ignoring of science by one generation bars the door of progress and the next generation suffers accordingly. Understanding of science is the greatest legacy we can bequeath to posterity. Winterton C. Curtis, Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology

And that's why Carl Sagan vigorously rejected the opposition of science to religion. Both are spiritual enterprises, concerned with those unknown possibilities and our legacy for future generations. It's why he called science "informed worship." The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
And that's why William James said the deepest religious impulse is for life, "more life, a richer, more fulfilling, more satisfying life." The word religion comes from a root that means to bind or connect, above all to connect to nature and to other humans.

Spirituality comes from a root that means breath. To breathe is to live, and to deliberately honor and gratify the life impulse is to serve the spirit. Science and religion at their best, shorn respectively of narrow materialist defeatism and of anti-scientistic superstition and fear, both do that.

And so the curtain comes down, our course is through. But may we all continue to evolve into a brighter light of mutual understanding and acceptance. Keep your health, be happy, I'll talk to you again soon.